


murdering promises that I just can't keep

by thatsparrow



Category: Destroyer (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 03:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17614181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: What am I allergic to?Strawberries. What's my mother's middle name?Rebecca. Where's my favorite breakfast place?IHOP—you uncultured asshole.





	murdering promises that I just can't keep

**Author's Note:**

> wasn't expecting to write any fic walking into this movie but uh that whole undercover cop dynamic got me good
> 
> title from "hellfire" by barns courtney

_What am I allergic to?_

_Strawberries. What's my mother's middle name?_

_Rebecca. Where's my favorite breakfast place?_

_IHOP—you uncultured asshole._

_IHOP is an American institution._

_Bullshit. You know what it says that my girlfriend's favorite breakfast place is IHOP? It says that, bare minimum, I'm too much of a useless fuck in the kitchen to turn something decent out of a box of Bisquick. You know how hard it is to fuck up Bisquick? That's, like, metal-in-the-microwave levels of inept. What's Silas gonna think of me then?_

_I'll tell you what he's_ not _gonna think — that you're some kind of lily-white pussy who makes pancakes for his girlfriend-slash-fuckbuddy._

_Which is a damn shame, really. I'd like to make pancakes for my girlfriend. Sunday morning breakfast in bed, one of those smiley-faces done up in whipped cream and a couple of cut-up strawberries on the side—wait, shit, you're allergic. Okay, blueberries. Fuck. Fuck me. Let's run it again._

They never went to the same place more than once when they were rehearsing the details of their undercover selves, those painted-outside-the-lines, focus-blurred versions of Erin and Chris. They split a stack of waffles at some 24-hour diner over in North Hollywood and traded yellow legal-pads bulleted with high-school trivia. _Tenth-grade English teacher: Ms. Watts. First car: '96 VW Cabrio. Junior Prom date: Julie Tucker._ They holed up one afternoon in a kitschy college dive that was wallpapered with record sleeves from the '60s and out-of-state license plates, multicolored Christmas lights strung through the rafters even in the middle of goddamn May. Red and orange flickering like firelight off empty bottles of Corona while they tested each other on the scrapbook moments from their childhoods, writing out pop quizzes on the back of paper napkins with a pen borrowed from their waiter.

_Where did I live before LA?_

_Pasadena. How many siblings do I have?_

_One brother, younger. What about me?_

_Please. You're such an only child._

For Erin, learning the steps of her undercover-self felt less like putting on the heavy plastic of a Halloween mask than it did slipping into an old pair of shoes, something familiar and well-worn, if now a little tight around the heels. The kitchen of Silas' house is just as shitty as the one where she grew up: cockroaches running skittering circles over the coffee-stained grout and a knot of exposed wires jutting from the wall next to the oven like the tail of something that'd crawled between the baseboards and died there. Reeks like something rotted, too. The first time Arturo pulls her a beer from the fridge, she's back to being seven years old and watching her dad do the same for whatever twenty-something in a denim skirt he'd brought home for that week. Bright pink polish across her nails and lipstick in a matching shade she'd left stained across the lip of the bottle, and never mind that the bus was pulling up in nine minutes and neither Erin or her brother had eaten breakfast yet. Those girls always had blonde hair dyed uneven around the roots, too, just like Petra. Just like the Fed with the skinny tie had been pushing for Erin to do, during their fourth meeting in that air-conditioned conference room at the FBI building downtown.

"I'm telling you," he'd said to Gil, Erin's file open on the glass-top table in front of him, "she doesn't look white-trash enough. You kidding me, with those fucking freckles? They're gonna think she's some Girl Scout come to sell them Thin Mints or Samoas or fucking whatever."

He'd been looking at Gil as he'd talked, hadn't even glanced Erin's way until she'd leaned forward and said, "All due respect, but I don't need some bottle-bleach job to sell this, okay? I'm telling you, I can do it."

"And Napoleon thought he could conquer Russia; saying so doesn't make it true, sweetheart. For this to work, these people need to trust you—they need to fucking _know_ that you're one of them—and that won't happen with you looking all clean-cut around the edges. Jesus, Gil, come _on_. She looks like she belongs on the back of some brochure for the local community college and you want to send her undercover with Silas?"

"Let's move on, Stan." That was Gil, pulling out his this-conversation-is-over voice. "She says she can do it, and I trust her, so maybe we can get to the other half-dozen things we need to go through."

Funniest thing to Erin wasn't the half hour that Stan had spent nitpicking her bangs, or her smile, or even her fucking complexion—no, it was him thinking that Chris fit the bill better than she did because, what? Because Chris looked like the kind of barroom brawler who'd cut his knuckles on some fucker's teeth? Because he'd papered over the laugh lines around his eyes with something steel-sharp enough to pass for a bruiser's mugshot? Even if he could pass himself off as someone hungry and hard-edged as Silas, this was still just a part he was playing.

Erin doesn't think the Fed got further than the photo clipped to the inside of her file, but even if he had, he wouldn't have learned much of her history, certainly not any of the junkyard furniture details. She did well enough at pretending, but she knew what it was like to pick ants out of her Frosted Flakes as a kid because what else was there to eat? Chris didn't. He could practice in front of a mirror much as he wanted—and he should, for both their sakes—but he could only ever imitate the shit that Erin had learned firsthand. Not that he came from Malibu money like Petra—not like he was slumming it to piss off Daddy, or whatever fucking reason it was that rich girls took up with guys like Silas—but Chris had never worn the same shoes even after they were falling apart at the seams. This wasn't a guy who'd ever spent the night at the Denny's down the road because Dad had fucked off again and none of the bills were paid. The Feds had talked him into that stupid haircut to help sell the story better, but Erin could see how the role didn't quite fit around his shoulders, how it chafed against him in the way he kept running his hand over the back of his head where it was newly buzzed to the scalp. Feeling for the rest of his hair like he was searching for the pieces of his past the Feds had redacted, had scissored out and replaced with something more palatable for this rougher, almost-but-not-quite version of Chris.

He said he knew what it was like to be starving, but Erin didn't really believe it. If that was true, if he'd really spent a decade breaking his fingernails like she had, she wouldn't have needed to spend so much time talking him into being a part of Silas' plan; he would have been right there with her, would have been ready to go after it with his teeth if the payoff really meant a lifetime of peace.

(That happens later, though, and so Erin doesn't know that side of him yet. Just like she doesn't know that the cost of her hunger will be Chris bleeding out on the bank's carpet and seventeen years of regret that she'll carry like a constant bruise. She also doesn't know at this point that she loves him, but she'll figure it out soon enough.)

They're sitting in Silas' living room and she can feel the warmth of his palm on the stretch of faded denim above her knee, steady and reassuring in how solid he feels against her side. Holding her fast like an anchor whenever Silas glances over and gives her that sideways look like she's got an LAPD badge tattooed to her fucking forehead, like he fucking _knows_ how full of shit she is, even when she hasn't slipped once. Her third beer is starting to go warm in her hands, and Erin can't tell whether the slickness against her palms is condensation off the glass or her own nervous sweat.

"Hey, you wanna get out of here?" Chris' voice is low in her ear, cutting through whatever bullshit Toby and Arturo are shooting back-and-forth over the PS2, and Erin nods against his shoulder, letting him guide her up off the couch. There's a pattern to this, and Erin plays it up more than she normally would, stumbling a little into Chris and pressing herself against his side as he walks them around Toby's outstretched legs and the wood-paneled bookshelf up against the living room wall. She's got her eyes half-closed at that point, but she feels his hand slide into the back pocket of her jeans, his newly-cut stubble rough against her neck as he presses his mouth to the skin under her jaw. He smells like cheap beer and gas-station cigarettes, and his steps are a little clumsy as he takes them up the stairs, but Erin trusts him, trusts the weight of his arm curved around her back to catch her if she fell. They'd been practicing trust in those two-star bars and diners as much as they had personal trivia, and some days—like the one when Silas had been flicking his lighter open-and-closed and wondering out loud how long Toby could hold his palm over the flame—that trust is the only thing keeping her from running out of the house.

It occurs to her once they're in the bedroom that they don't have to stay so close, not like anyone's gonna press an ear to the door to make sure they're actually fucking, but neither of them makes to move away, staying slotted together as neat as magnets.

"You doing alright?" Chris asks after a beat, pulling back just enough to look her over. The overhead light in the bedroom is mostly burned out, dust and dead moths collected around the inside of the fixture, but it's enough for Erin to see his expression, more concerned than not.

"No. Yes." She rests her hand on the back of his neck, feeling the scrape of his too-short hair against her skin. It had been long enough before that she could twist her fingers into it, the way she'd done in that no-name bar off the 405 when she'd pulled him in for a kiss. His new look doesn't suit him nearly as well, but maybe that's a good thing, a reminder that they're both playing scripted parts. "I'll be fine."

Chris nods, and there's that trust again. Him taking her at her word, and does he know that's more respect than any of her other partners had shown her? It's not why she'll fall in love with him, but it certainly gets her there sooner.

"We should probably call it a night anyway." Chris says, clearing his throat a little. "Or, I don't know, give it at least a half-hour or something before heading back downstairs. Forty-five minutes, maybe, if you're feeling generous."

"I could just be blowing you."

He laughs a little and— _fuck_ —he is beautiful. Erin remembers thinking the same when they'd first met, both of them still in uniform and holding their shoulders straight back like they'd been taught at the Academy. Covered up in all these polished, prettied-up layers that the Feds would strip away with varnish remover, but even with half his hair gone and smelling like he'd spent the night in a junkyard truck bed—even later, stretched out in the morning sun on those sheets that were more yellow than white—Erin is struck with just how fucking pretty he is. A smile that belongs on the back of a magazine instead of cozying up to someone like Silas.

She's still got her hand on the back of his neck and, before she thinks about it, she pulls him down to her, pressing her mouth against his in a kiss that's more clumsy than hot, not coordinated enough at first to do much more than bump their teeth together. The door is closed behind them, so it's not like she can play this off as an act, something served up for Toby's or Arturo's benefit, a cashed check that buys them a little more assurance. Fuck that. She kisses him because she wants to, and because she trusts him, and maybe because even now there's a part of her that guesses how fleeting this all is, something rusted that threatens to give way under her feet.

But the ground is holding for now, and she can feel Chris smiling against her mouth as he slows them down into a steadier rhythm, not the second or the third or even the twelfth time they've done this, but better for the fact that it's the first moment this has been for nobody's benefit but theirs.

(It makes for a good memory, something warm and rose-colored that Erin keeps in a polished frame until it becomes too painful to think about, until after she'd promised Chris that no one would get hurt and she'd fucked it up worse than anything she ever had or ever would. Doesn't know how to revisit that moment in their borrowed bedroom and feel anything good about it when it's just a sour reminder that this half-faded collection of memories is all she has left of him.)


End file.
